| << Coliny1 | 2002 > September | Cleaning up >> |
Desire and Doing ::
I’ve remarked a few times recently that I have a way of spending a lot of time creating tools for some particular task—but ending up spending more time creating the tool than using it. I was talking to someone about people with artistic aspirations which they never get around to putting the effort into fulfilling, and her frustrations in dealing with these people, and realized a potentially unpleasant parallel: I have a career building music tools, and I got started in it because I wanted to use the tools I created, but spent vastly more time building the tools than using them. Is that right?
Is there a human tendency to get attached to the process and forget the goal? Or is that simply losing oneself in the moment and not being concerned with goals?
I have the satisfaction of knowing that many others have used my tools and are often grateful for them. (Recent strange experience: going to a party and meeting 5 musicians who use or have used Macs for music software, and some being amazed that I wrote OMS. Oh yeah, I remember that now :-)
So perhaps the important thing is to be honest with ourselves about what we’re doing. If I’m making a tool instead of making music, it’s fine to think about how I would want to use it if I were making music, but it’s not really getting me any closer to actually making music. If I want to make music, I should be making music.
What am I doing right now?
| << Coliny1 | 2002 > September | Cleaning up >> |